(rants and observations on outsider culture, music & cinema in The Big Wet)

Tuesday, June 13, 2017

More on Christophe Szpajdel

Christophe Szpajdel in Vancouver, by Allan MacInnis

Christophe Szpajdel is a thoroughly unique human being. His passion and enthusiasm for his art are stunning; so is his enthusiasm for black metal and for talking about his art and black metal, which he seems to do tirelessly; you get the impression when he's not doing his work, he's talking about his work (though I gather he did get to spend part of the afternoon yesterday searching for frogs in Lynn Canyon, unsuccessfully). The day after Black 2, I ended up at a two hour dinner at the vegan Chinese restaurant Po Kung, on Kingsway, with Kevin Eisenlord, the Vegan Black Metal Chef, and Christophe; but the show was really all Christophe's. We talked about everything from recent disappointments - a client who he did over 40 variants on a logo for before they changed their mind - and his past history (the early days of black metal and his fandom for it). I'll be transcribing it all when I get a chance; it's a really interesting interview, he's a really interesting man (and I've put a clip of our talk online).

Unfortunately - for whatever reason - very few people came out to see Christophe, for the first and maybe only time, painting for about an hour live onstage on a beautiful naked girl named Medina, onstage at the Rickshaw on Sunday. I've never seen anything remotely like it (and he was followed by a great performance by SVNEATR, who also joined us at Po Kung yesterday). It would have been an incredible, if somewhat odd, inclusion in the Covenant - which Christophe attended, and would have loved to have been a more active participant in. Didn't happen! Something somewhere must have been offputting to people on the scene, because it would have been quite the addition (a few photos got taken, which I will post presently, but you really had to see it live, which I would guess fewer than fifty people did).

In other news, possibly related, I had odd dreams last night of seeing the Blue Oyster Cult at the Rickshaw, where they were doing a very strange, busy, and disorienting bit of live theatre, incorporating the songs. Buck Dharma. at one point, paused and expressed concern for a sunburn on my neck that I actually do not have; Mo Tarmohamed and Rob Frith were in the audience, as well.

About Me

Writer, aging punk, cinephile. Fan of the obscure and outside. ESL teacher, occasional used bookstore guy; zombie when the mood strikes me. Haven't been based in Vancouver for awhile now but "Alienated In The Metrotown Area" is an even worse blogname than I already have. And I still have ties to Maple Ridge (sigh).